Doctors Wonder Why the Flu Season Has Fizzled
March 2, 2010
Wall Street Journal
By Betsy McKay
This has been a flu season like few others.
Normally at this time of year, influenza is rampant in the U.S., prompting hundreds of thousands of people to stay home in the dead of winter with fever, aches and pains.
Now, after raging through college campuses and communities last summer and fall, cases of the new H1N1 swine flu virus have dwindled to a trickle, and run-of-the-mill seasonal flu has barely made an appearance. Not one state reported widespread flu illness to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the week ended Feb. 20, the latest data available. The percentage of all doctors’ visits by patients with influenza-like symptoms has dropped from a high of 7.8% in late October—the largest peak since the agency began surveillance in 1997—to 1.8% in late February, well below the norm for flu season.
Doctors and flu experts say the lull is unusual. “This is typically the peak of flu,” said James Turner, executive director of the University of Virginia’s department of student health. He said the Charlottesville, Va., student health center usually sees as many as 130 students a week complaining of flu symptoms this time of year. Recently, no more than three to five students a week have been coming in with fever, cough or other signs of flu, he said.
It is not clear why there is so little flu, particularly swine flu, going around, experts say. “Surely there’s a sufficient number of people who haven’t been infected or vaccinated,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
Many scientists say the answer probably has to do with how the flu virus progresses. Influenza comes and goes in waves, normally running from October through May. But pandemic viruses—new viruses that emerge and spread quickly around the globe—often move to a different rhythm, and can reach their busiest stage at unusual times like summer and early fall, although the reason for this isn’t understood. Flu has peaked in late February or early March in 20 of the past 26 flu seasons, said Lyn Finelli, the CDC’s chief of flu surveillance and outbreak response. But the latest swine flu wave started in August, and peaked in late October, before waning.
Widely publicized preventive measures such as hand washing, and the large national vaccination effort thus far, may also have played a role in the sharp drop off in H1N1 infections, but it is not clear by how much, said Anthony Fiore, a medical epidemiologist with the CDC’s influenza division.
By mid-January, swine flu had sickened about 57 million people in the U.S. and killed roughly 11,700—mostly young adults and children—from the time it emerged in late April through mid-January. Young people who ordinarily fight off flu easily ended up in intensive care units on advanced life support. Pregnant women, children, and other people at risk of flu complications stood in line for hours for vaccine, as slow production and delays prompted limited supplies.
In past years, when seasonal flu was the big worry, influenza has typically sickened about 25 million people a year, and directly killed about 8,000, according to the CDC.
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WHO: Pandemic Has Yet to Peak
February 24, 2010
comcast.net
The pandemic of H1N1 swine flu has not yet peaked, a committee of experts advised the World Health Organization on Tuesday.
“The committee advised that it was premature to conclude that all parts of the world have experienced peak transmission of the H1N1 pandemic influenza and that additional time and information was needed to provide expert advice on the status of the pandemic,” WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said by e-mail.
WHO planned a news conference for Wednesday.
The United Nations agency declared last June that the new virus was causing the first influenza pandemic in more than 40 years after it spread around the world from Mexico and the United States in just six weeks.
Under WHO rules the emergency committee, composed of 15 experts and headed by Australian John MacKenzie, makes confidential recommendations to WHO director-general Dr. Margaret Chan.
She is then required to inform the health ministries of WHO’s 192 member states and the Vatican of her decision. The WHO’s decision will be announced formally by the WHO’s top flu expert Dr. Keiji Fukuda on Wednesday at 1000 GMT.
WHO has confirmed the virus has killed 16,000 people but notes this is a gross underestimate, as hardly any patients are diagnosed or tested. It will take a year or two after the pandemic ends to establish the true death toll, the WHO says.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does projections based on testing and patterns of disease reports and projects that H1N1 has killed up to 17,000 people in the United States alone, and put as many as 370,000 into the hospital with serious illness.
In contrast, seasonal influenza kills 250,000 to 500,000 people globally but most are frail and elderly. H1N1 has attacked young adults and children.
SUBSTANTIAL OUTBREAKS
The pandemic sparked a race to develop new vaccines by drug makers including GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi-Aventis but has proved to be of moderate severity, and many people failed to take the new vaccine.
Previous influenza pandemics have had waves of disease activity spread over months, meaning the post-peak period could last quite a while, according to the WHO.
The final stage, called the post-pandemic period, is when disease activity returns to levels normally seen for seasonal influenza, it says.
“There is no on and off switch for a pandemic. It’s not a single event. What we have to see is that the behavior of the H1N1 virus becomes like the behavior of other seasonal viruses,” Hartl said earlier on Tuesday.
“At the moment, it is still causing substantial outbreaks of disease outside the normal influenza seasons and affecting groups who are not normally affected by seasonal influenza. So as long as that continues, it does not behave like seasonal influenza.”
Younger people, especially those with chronic medical conditions, and pregnant women continue to be at a higher risk of infection and viral pneumonia from the H1N1 virus, Fukuda told reporters last week.
The WHO has cautioned that the H1N1 virus could still mutate or mix with the more deadly bird flu virus, which remains endemic in poultry in many Asian countries.
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Deadly Hybrid Flu Possible
February 22, 2010
HealthDay News
Research in mice suggests the avian flu virus and the ordinary seasonal flu virus could combine to create a new deadly kind of flu, researchers say.
A single bit of genetic material from the seasonal virus converted the avian flu — officially known as H5N1 — into a very dangerous form, the scientists report in a study published in the Feb. 22-26 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Some hybrids between H5N1 virus and seasonal influenza viruses were more pathogenic than the original H5N1 viruses. That is worrisome,” study senior author Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in a news release.
Avian flu, also known as bird flu, has killed 262 people, according to the World Health Organization, but it hasn’t become very infectious between people.
The researchers warn that swine flu — H1N1 — could also play a role in viral combinations.
“With the new pandemic H1N1 virus, people sort of forgot about H5N1 avian influenza. But the reality is that H5N1 avian virus is still out there,” Kawaoka said. “Our data suggests that it is possible there may be reassortment between H5N1 and pandemic H1N1 that can create a more pathogenic H5N1 virus.”
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Influenza Vaccine Has No Effect
February 10th, 2010
The Local
There is no evidence to support the contention that the influenza vaccine administered to the over 65s is of any more use than opening the windows and washing hands, a new study from the Cochrane Collaboration claims, according to a report in the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper.
•Sweden evaluates swine flu response (17 Jan 10)
•Swine flu named year’s top Swedish news story (30 Dec 09)
•Sweden’s swine flu response wins EU praise (4 Dec 09)
The Cochrane Collaboration, an international not-for-profit organization providing up-to-date information about the effects of health care, has compiled data from 40 flu seasons worldwide.
The institute has concluded from the studies that there is no clear evidence to suggest that the flu jab offers any more protection than cheaper, hygiene-based methods such as hand-washing.
“Our analysis is compiled using millions of data from 40 seasons worldwide. What we have seen is that the influenza vaccine can at best have a very small effect,” said Thomas Jefferson, one of the authors of the report, to the newspaper.
The Swedish Welfare Board (Socialstyrelsen) has for the past 40 years advised all those over 65-years-old to take an annual dose.
Most local health authorities in Sweden pay for the flu jab at a cost to the taxpayer of 25-30 million kronor ($3.5 million) per annum.
This is not the first time the Cochrane Collaboration has sounded the alarm over the paltry effects of the vaccine with a report published four years ago drawing the same conclusions, according to the newspaper.
The institute has now selected the best 75 of the available studies for this latest review of the evidence. While conceding that the studies are not of the best research quality, it concludes there is little evidence to suggest that the flu vaccine has any real effect.
The institute thus recommends a larger international, state-financed study to examine the vaccine and existing healthcare recommendations.
Click here for the full report
The Forced Vaccine Argument – Act of Violence?
February 22, 2010
Natural News
By Mike Adams
This parody cartoon grew out of the idea that vaccines are “shots” that are being increasingly forced upon children and teens. At times, these vaccines are enforced at gunpoint or with the presence of vicious guard dogs — as happened in Maryland two years ago when a court judge ordered thousands of parents to bring their children to court for vaccination or face gunpoint arrest and possible jail time.
Most modern vaccinations are, of course, a form of chemical violence against children. If they were all formulated without chemical preservatives (like thimerosal) and dangerous adjuvants (which can harm the nervous system), that might be a different story. But far too many of today’s vaccines are chemical concoctions that are entirely unnatural to the human body. To force them into the bodies of innocent children is an act of medical violence.
The method of introducing the vaccines is unnatural and highly interventionist: These chemicals and DNA / RNA fragments are injected directly into the tissues and blood, bypassing the skin (a normal protective defense) and bypassing the digestive system, too. An injected mandatory vaccine dumps foreign material directly into the bloodstream of children without the consent of either the child or the parents — that’s what qualifies mandatory vaccines as “chemical violence” against children.
The Mad Doctor is in
The doctor in this parody cartoon was intentionally created to depict a “crazed” mad doctor because nothing turns an ordinary doctor into a mad man faster than an argument about vaccines. While he may seem to be a reasonable person on all other subjects, once you challenge him on the dangers of over-vaccination of children, all reason gets thrown out the window and he morphs into a raging lunatic of unscientific emotion.
The complete lack of scientific evidence supporting the safety and efficacy of vaccines makes no difference to him. “Vaccines need no science,” he’ll say, “Because everybody knows they work!”
My offer of $10,000 to anyone who can produce a scientific study proving the safety and effectiveness of H1N1 vaccines remains utterly unclaimed.
Vaccine failures are common
Meanwhile, in the real world vaccines are failing miserably. A recent outbreak of mumps in the New Jersey / New York area occurred almost entirely among children who had already been vaccinated against mumps.
Clearly if vaccines really worked, then an outbreak should have only occurred among those who were NOT vaccinated against mumps, right? But as I reported here on NaturalNews, 77 percent of the children who got infected had already been vaccinated!
A similar truth emerges when you look at H1N1 deaths: Thousands of those who were vaccinated against H1N1 swine flu had already received the vaccine shots (http://www.naturalnews.com/027956_H…). We still don’t know the exact number of how many vaccinated people died because the CDC is hiding that data from the public, making sure the mainstream media doesn’t learn the truth that even many of those who were vaccinated still died.
What the CDC and its Big Pharma cohorts want people to mistakenly believe is that vaccines always offer protection against infectious disease. (100% protection). But this is blatantly false. In fact, because vaccines introduce a weakened virus into the body, they may hamper the normal immune response, creating systemic weakness that makes people more vulnerable to future infectious disease. In essence, weakened viruses create weakened immune responses, “training” the immune system to be more passive against future threats. That’s why people who received vaccines in the past are far more likely to die of infectious disease in the future.
Click here for the full report
WHO Advising Swine Flu Vaccine to be Combined With Regular Flu Vaccine
February 22, 2010
Associated Press
The World Health Organization is recommending that swine flu be added to the regular flu vaccine next season.
WHO said in a statement Thursday that it held a meeting this week to decide which flu strains should be recommended to drug makers for their vaccines during the northern hemisphere’s next flu season, which begins in the fall.
Flu vaccines have three virus strains — which experts decide on after estimating which strains made the most people sick last season.
Last year, the swine flu pandemic virus, or H1N1, emerged too late to be added to the regular flu vaccine and a new vaccine was needed.
Click here for the full report
Study Claims “Influenza Vaccine Has No Effect”
February 17th, 2010
infowars.com
There is no evidence to support the contention that the influenza vaccine administered to the over 65s is of any more use than opening the windows and washing hands, a new study from the Cochrane Collaboration claims, according to a report in the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper.
The Cochrane Collaboration, an international not-for-profit organization providing up-to-date information about the effects of health care, has compiled data from 40 flu seasons worldwide.
The institute has concluded from the studies that there is no clear evidence to suggest that the flu jab offers any more protection than cheaper, hygiene-based methods such as hand-washing.
Click here for the full report
Why We Must Oppose The WHO Global Tax Proposals
January 20, 2010 by joel
Filed under Government
January 20, 2010
Corbett Report
By James Corbett
Fresh on the heels of a Dutch investigation into the conflicts of interest of their chief influenza advisor and the bombshell announcement that the Council of Europe will be probing their role in creating and sustaining panic over the recent H1N1 outbreak in order to sell vaccines for Big Pharma, the World Health Organization is now conisdering “innovative” proposals for raising additional revenues, including levying a global tax on internet activity.
The startling revelation comes in a report submitted by an Expert Working Group ahead of the biannual meeting of the WHO’s Executive Board. Tasked with finding a financial mechanism for funding the WHO’s mandate of transfering health technologies to the developing world, the team of bureaucrats and medical researchers have spent the past 14 months developing a variety of suggestions, including:
-A digital tax: “Internet traffic is huge and likely to increase rapidly; this tax could yield tens of billions of US dollars from a broad base of users.”
-A financial transaction tax: “Brazil’s financial transaction tax”[...]set at 0.38% levied on paying bills online and major withdrawals, it was raising an estimate [sic] US$ 20 billion per year and funding some 87% of the Government’s key social protection programme, Bolsa Familia, before it was voted down.”
-An arms trade tax: “a 10% tax on the arms trade market, which might net about US$ 5 billion per annum.”
The funds raised from such schemes—ranging into the tens of billions of dollars depending on which plans are enacted—would be ostensibly used to aid in the transfer of medical technologies to the developing world so that local research, development and production of medicines can be ramped up. It is argued that this is needed to fill the gap left by pharmaceutical companies who have no motivation to produce medicines for areas of the world that can’t afford to pay for them. Additionally, local research and development would allow for the incorporation of local ingredients and traditional medicines in different parts of the globe.
Although these aims are laudable on the surface, such platitudes obscure the underlying reality that the WHO’s plans would amount to nothing more than the latest attempt by the UN to set the precedent for a global tax to fund their stated goal of establishing global governmental structures. On top of that, the WHO itself has recently been exposed as little more than a vehicle for Big Pharma-connected fraudsters to line their own pockets. Add to that the fact that the WHO and other UN-affiliated agencies have been caught sterilizing women without their knowledge or consent in country after country and it quickly becomes apparent that these are no ordinary taxation proposals by misguided do-gooders. On the contrary, these measures if enacted could signal the birth of a UN-administered global eugenics body.
WHO Official Denies Over Hyping Flu Pandemic Exaggeration
January 18, 2010
The Washington Post
By Rob Stein
A top World Health Organization official dismissed charges Thursday that the agency exaggerated the threat posed by the H1N1 virus and that it had been unduly influenced by the pharmaceutical industry to issue dire warnings about the swine flu pandemic.
“The world is going through a real pandemic. The description of it as a fake is both wrong and irresponsible,” Keiji Fukuda, the special adviser to the WHO director general on pandemic influenza, told reporters during a briefing. “WHO has been balanced and truthful in the information it has provided to the public. It has not underplayed and not overplayed the risk it poses to the public.
“We did take very great care that the advice it received is not unduly influenced.”
Fukuda’s defense of the Geneva-based arm of the United Nations came as the agency has received increasing criticism, primarily in Europe, that it overstated the threat posed by the virus, which emerged last spring in Mexico and the United States. The criticisms have prompted the Council of Europe to launch an investigation of the WHO’s actions.
The agency estimates that the pandemic has directly killed at least 13,000 people worldwide already, and that number could eventually turn out to be “much larger” once the pandemic is over, Fukuda said.
Although so far the pandemic has turned out to be relatively mild, Fukuda warned that it is not over. The number of cases is dropping in many countries, but the virus continues to spread and activity is increasing in some parts of the world, including areas of northern Africa, southern Asia and Eastern Europe.
Another wave could come in the Northern Hemisphere in late winter or early spring, as has occurred in previous pandemics, Fukuda said, and more illness and deaths could occur in the Southern Hemisphere.
Finally, Fukuda said the agency has strict rules in place requiring anyone who provides advice to the WHO to disclose any financial conflicts of interest, including any ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
“Has the WHO been influenced by industry? The answer is no,” he said. “To protect the integrity of the advice given to WHO and remain free from undue influence, WHO has had in place routine protections against conflict of interest. This is true for a long time but also during this particular pandemic.”
The WHO’s aggressive defense comes as several countries in Europe have announced plans to cut back on vaccine orders, partly because only one vaccination is needed instead of the two anticipated, but also because of the relative mildness of the illness.
Fukuda warned against second-guessing the decision to buy vaccine and urged people to continue to get vaccinated, especially those at high risk of severe illness from the virus.
“There are still a large number of people out there at high risk for serious complications from this infection,” he said.
Click here for the full report
WHO Chieft Gets H1N1 Flu Vaccine
January 5, 2010
Reuters
By Stephanie Nebehay
Margaret Chan, WHO director-general, was vaccinated on December 30, a day after admitting at a news conference that she had not got round to it due to travel and other demands.
“She is feeling very well, working and very busy as usual,” WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib told a news briefing. “The flu will be with us for a few more months.”
H1N1, commonly known as swine flu, has spread to 208 countries and territories, according to WHO which declared an influenza pandemic last June. The virus has officially killed at least 12,220 people, but the true death toll is much higher and could take two years to establish, it says.
Chan said last week it would take another six to 12 months for the first pandemic in more than 40 years to run its course.
She called for continued vigilance, noting that pregnant women, young people and those with chronic medical conditions like asthma are at greatest risk.
Azerbaijan and Mongolia are scheduled later this week to become the first developing countries to receive donated H1N1 vaccine doses, Chaib said.
In all, six drug companies and 14 industrialized countries have pledged nearly 190 million doses for use in 95 developing countries, she said.
GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis and Sanofi-Aventis are among major producers of H1N1 vaccine.
